An Acquired Taste

If clichés are to be believed, the French are a sexually uninhibited, wildly romantic, free-spirited people. French culture is fraught with sexual innuendo and imagery. Even the capital’s architectural choices can be understood as phallic symbols (think: the Eiffel Tower or the Luxor Obelisk at Place de la Concorde). It’s 2018, and French actress Brigitte Bardot still maintains her decades-long reputation as an iconic sex symbol. France’s famed cinematography amasses international viewers when films like Gaspar Noé’s Love and Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color captivate audiences with their graphic sex scenes. And then there are the libertine clubs, commonly known as sex clubs or swingers’ clubs, that come to life during Parisian nights.

Sex clubs, swingers’ clubs and libertine clubs are in most cases the same thing except that swingers’ clubs are primarily for couples. In each of these spaces, visitors seek some form of sexual gratification. This often comes in the form of physical sexual encounters with others, though for some patrons, observing the clubs’ happenings is enough to fulfill voyeuristic desires. In France there are roughly 500 sex clubs. The city with the highest concentration of clubs? Paris.

Parisian libertine clubs have patrons from all ranks of society. Politicians like Dominique Strauss- Kahn have reportedly attended Les Chandelles, a high-end establishment in the first arrondissement. According to a 2016 study by the Institut Français d’Opinion Publique, 18 percent of Parisians have visited a swingers’ club. Students, particularly non- French students, might be surprised to hear that amongst these ranks are university students just like them. What prompts these undergraduate students to attend these clubs? What is their primary interest? Sex? Voyeurism? Boredom? All of the above? Looking to offer an explanation, four students share their reasons for trying out and returning to Parisian sex clubs.

Sarah,* a 21-year-old AUP student from Louisiana, has been twice to two different clubs. On both occasions, she went with her then-boyfriend Aurélien,* a 21-year-old Parisian studying at a French business school. Sarah says that she broached the subject with her boyfriend despite not exactly understanding the basis of these venues. After hearing the phrase in passing, she told him she wanted to go to a libertine club. When Aurélien asked if she knew what that meant, she lied and said she did. But when he thoroughly explained what they were, she realized, “Wait, that’s exactly where I want to go.”

She fancied the idea because the two were interested in exploring their sex life. Sarah says she has always struggled with jealousy but was at the same time open to having sex with her boyfriend and another partner. She admits that she also “just wanted to have sex in public.” Aurélien says when she brought up the idea that he was surprised in a good way. While he didn’t particularly like the idea of having sex in front of an audience, he felt compelled to go and see how the clubs were run.

The couple went to the Overside, a club on the rue du Cherche-Midi in the sixth arrondissement, as well as to Quai 17 in the 19th arrondissement. Aurélien laughed that as a child he would often pass the Overside without realizing what laid behind its doors. He’d think, “Why is this place always closed?

It’s so weird. I wonder if things happen here?” Fifteen years later, he has crossed its threshold, finally seeing what he could not have imagined as a kid.

As Aurélien’s anecdote suggests, these clubs are so well integrated into Paris’s cityscape that you could easily walk past them and never guess it. A quick Google search will supply of dozens of Yelp and TripAdvisor lists of sex clubs tactfully camouflaged to match their surroundings.

Despite their original enthusiasm to go together, the couple views the experiences at both clubs negatively. Sarah admits she is glad that she didn’t understand what the other patrons were saying about them in French. Lamentably, Aurélien did. When one man came too close to Sarah in the club and Aurélien asked that he step back, the man asked, “Why’d you bring her here if you’re not going to share her?” The atmosphere was too uncomfortable for them. Neither wants to go back, in large part because they were more than a decade younger than the next youngest visitors. “We were just ‘those kids’ in there being watched from the beginning which was creepy.”

Alexandra,* a 19-year-old from New York City, spent two semesters at AUP. In that time, she went to three different sex clubs an estimated eight times. At first, she went for curiosity’s sake: “I was curious to go because I knew I wasn’t going to partake in any of the activities, but I wanted to see how the clubs are structured.” She got her answer by visiting multiple clubs, mainly Le We Club and Le Duplex. Like a normal club, she saw patrons dancing and milling about the space. On the fringes however, there were groups of people having sex, sometimes seven at a time.

Alexandra says that she and her friends rarely planned to go. They were spur-of-the-moment decisions. At the end of a night out, they’d ask themselves, “What is the craziest shit we could do right now?” After her first time, Alexandra continued to go to these clubs because she wanted to keep “seeing

things that are obscure and not something you’d see at a normal club.” She finds them “specific to Parisian culture: very sexually liberated, sexually open.” This enabled her and her friends to enter the clubs as a fun, outlandish thing to do rather than as a secretive act.

While Alexandra is adamant that she has never partaken in sexual activities at a sex club, had she only gone once, the experience would have only partially satisfied her curiosity. Instead, her first encounter fed an appetite she didn’t know she had. Once she acknowledged it, she wanted to return even more.

She says, “It’s like a rush. When you see it, it’s the same sensation you would get when you take ecstasy... The rush that you get from seeing something crazy... I always thought there would be something crazier, something more, so I would go.”

Now, Alexandra realizes that “in Paris there’s a lot of culture in the sex club world. A lot of them are not what you would think. They’re not trashy, they’re not gross. They’re actually quite — I wouldn’t go as far as to say elegant — but I would say that they are well run.” She thinks it’s an underground scene worth visiting but suggests that interested students go with another person, never by themselves.

A scene from Noé’s Love piqued the interest of Jesse, an open-minded, 20-year-old foreign student attending an international university in Paris. Seeing the film encouraged her to seek a sex club to attend with a friend. Jesse has not only been to sex clubs but has also had group sex there. The most recent time she went, she was with her best female friend, another student-aged female friend and that girl’s husband.

They had drunk a lot of alcohol and were enjoying the atmosphere of the club so much that when Jesse’s best friend faked a marriage proposal using their other friend’s wedding ring, the club’s staff and clients thought it was real and popped champagne. “They popped five bottles of champagne and were pouring it on me,” she recounts. In the spirit of the staged proposal, the four walked down to another floor of the club and further celebrated on a bed before onlookers who had seen the girls get engaged.

The evolution of the night was unplanned and unexpected, but not shocking to Jesse. Her primary interest in sex clubs is her experiential thirst for life: in life, she believes, one should experience it all. She feels like “sex is a big part of life and it is crazy, the concept of sex.” She wants to do all there is to do, including every type of sex, therefore going to these clubs hasn’t fazed her.

In a research paper published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, authors Karel Vanhaesebrouck and Pol Dehert suggest that the “association of the word libertinism with a joyous sexual life and an explicit pornographic imagination is problematic.” Jesse does have an adventurous approach to life, but there is no reason to see her participation in the night’s events as indicative of anything “wrong” or perverse. Instead, what Vanhaesebrouck and Dehert assert is that having a libertine view of the world is a practice “both intellectual and physical, aimed at

the liberation of the individual mind. It is an attitude that one could describe as profoundly modern.” By indulging in her libertine quest to feel it all, Jesse is partaking not only in a physical act, but one which brings her a sense of self-actualization and that is a means for self-discovery.

Jesse’s frank explanation for her curiosity and desire to explore is a lens through which to view other students’ trips. Young and lacking a time-earned understanding of the world, students want to witness the imagined interiors of these clubs so that they can learn about themselves and explore what sex can be in untraditional settings. Jesse recognizes the uniqueness of her adventures and has no regrets. Sarah, too, is glad to have gone although she and Aurélien left disappointed. To those wondering if they should go, she advises: “Go, and maybe you’ll like it. But, don’t gone alone and don’t get upset if you don’t like it.”

Jesse suggest that students “go because you don’t know what you’re into until you try things out. Be open and talk to people and they’ll respect if you don’t want to do anything physical, but you need to put yourself out there if you’re going or else it’s pointless.”

These students have delved into Paris’s sex scene in different ways. You might understand Alexandra’s curiosity, Sarah and Aurélien’s desire to push their boundaries as a couple, or Jesse’s quest to experience sex in its many forms. You might not. One thing is for certain: you can never know what lies behind their doors unless you are curious enough to enter.

BY KATHLEEN SHARP

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHALIE DEBROISE